Tiwani Contemporary presents Virginia Chihota’s Munoonei kana makaditarisa nhai Mwari?/What do you see when you look at me ohh God? and For want of a horse, a button was lost by Felix Shumba, this June.
Virginia Chihota uniquely visualises her inner world as an emotionally shifting, symbolic terrain—a reconnaissance marked by vigilance, self-questioning and transformative resolution. These new works that form this exhibition originate from a question that unexpectedly came to her, “what do you see when you look at me?”.
The recurring motif of a seat, specifically a stool, becomes the pedestal for the represented body (her own) in direct observation and conversation with the Divine. A series of gesturally restless, and physiologically awkward standing or seated positions figure clearly in Chihota’s visual ruminations, acknowledging the reality of what’s experienced as opposed to the reality of what might be seen by others.
Chihota’s deeply introspective work is shaped by both landmark and everyday personal experiences. She reflects on themes of intimacy, kinship, bereavement, faith and transformation. Chihota’s distinctive approach blends screen-printing with drawing and painterly gestures, creating unique works marked by striking complexity. The female form often emerges in her work, blending into near abstraction, and her iconography highlights female agency, thereby challenging borders. Her art emphasises subjectivity as an interconnected concept, where individuals, communities and the environment are bound together.
Virginia Chihota was born in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, in 1983, and now lives and works in New York, USA. She graduated in Fine Arts from the National Art Gallery Studios in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2006. Chihota represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and was awarded the Prix Canson in the same year. In 2021, her works were commissioned by the Opéra National de Paris, France for Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. Munoonei kana makaditarisa nhai Mwari?/What do you see when you look at me ohh God? opens on the 5th of June and will run the 20th of September 2025 at Tiwani Contemporary, London.
Felix Shumba’s For want of a horse, a button was lost is an installation of charcoal drawings influenced by the evidential and documentary values of photography. The exhibition references 19th century daguerreotype plates and the work of American photojournalist J. Ross Bauman’s 1978 Pulitzer Prize winning sequence of photographs following the Grey’s Scouts, a Rhodesian mounted infantry and their brutal treatment of suspected guerrillas as part of inland security activity. Featuring a dystopian fiction that imagines a time-traveling military corps, the Salt Corps agents, activating a revisitation and surveyance of British colonial-era Rhodesia, now the Republic of Zimbabwe, Shumba explores the settler-colonial perspective and proprietary pursuit to discover, conquer and extract from a landscape and people that remain deeply scarred by trauma.
Shumba’s practice spans drawing, painting, video, text and installation. He deconstructs real and imagined spaces, which he refers to as Fold Fields Space (FFS) — these are areas haunted by death, trauma, ecological damage and the use of military force as a tool of control. Shumba’s work engages with masking and concealment, using dystopian imagery to address the performative rituals of power that have perpetuated racial capitalist extraction.
Through these works, he examines the history of settler-colonial Rhodesia and brings viewers closer to understanding contemporary challenges in Zimbabwe. At the heart of his practice is a constant probing of the stakes, the hidden truths as well as the ongoing struggle for freedom in the face of historical violence.
Felix Shumba (b.1989) was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and currently lives and works in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. In 2023, he was commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically In the Present, curated by Hoor Al Qasimi. His recent exhibitions include Iwillmedievalfutureyou2 at Lilith Performance studio in Malmoe, Sweden (2025); a following year at Galleria Fonti in Naples, Italy (2024); I Dream I’m Crossing the River at Uitstalling Gallery in Belgium (2024); and Museum of Natural History and Jahmek Contemporary Art in Luanda, Angola (2023).
Shumba has been invited to residencies such as the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, USA (2025); Edition Verso, Johannesburg, South Africa (2023); and the Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah, the UAE (2022). Coinciding with his exhibition at Tiwani Contemporary in London, Shumba will have a solo presentation at Art Basel, Statements, with Jahmek Contemporary Art, Luanda from the 19th until the 22nd of June 2025.
For want of a horse, a button was lost opens on the 5th of June and will run until the 20th of September 2025 at Tiwani Contemporary, London. These shows will synergistically align with London Gallery Weekend which takes place from the 6th until the 8th of June 2025.
